
Class 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 






fit 1 



A o(> 



/ 



What, will you walk with me about the town ? 
— Comedy of Errors. 



Streets and Slums. 



A STUDY IN 



LOCAL MUNICIPAL GEOGRAPHY. 



(WITH MAPS.) 



BY 



Frederick J. Brown. 



JAN 29 1892'* J 



BALTIMORE, 
CUSHING & COMPANY 



JAN /J* \XKL\ 



£<* 






Copyright, 1892, by Fred'k J. Brown. 



DEUTSCH I.1IH. A PRINTING CO., BALTIMORE. 



JUST as the growth and development of countries are determined 
to a great extent by their physical geography, the growth and 
development of cities depend largely upon what may be called 
their municipal geography, the laying out of the streets regularly 
or without regularity, the width and directions of the streets, and 
their distance apart.* Some cities, we all know, are laid out more 
regularly than others, most of our American cities aiming at great 
uniformity, one series of parallel streets being crossed at right angles 
by another series of parallel streets. While such regularity, or the 
absence of it, is a thing immediately obvious to the most careless 
observer, there is another respect in which cities differ from each 
other which is important, but not so obvious, indeed is very 
generally lost sight of, and only a few people who have studied the 
maps, and have done some measuring and figuring, know anything 
about it. 

And that is the wastefulness or economy of space with which a city 
is laid out, the shape and size of the blocks, the proportion which 
the area of the streets bears to the area of blocks. Some cities are 
laid out very extravagantly. Washington is a famniar instance. 
There is no city in the world laid out on such an extravagant scale. 
The streets and avenues are so many and so wide, that the proportion 
of the total area of the city which they cover is much greater than in 
any other city. It is so expensively planned that under normal con- 
ditions the owners of real estate would probably be simply ruined by 
the cost of maintaining such a city, so great is the area of streets to 
be kept paved, cleaned, lighted and policed, to say nothing of the 
parks and reservations to be kept in order. But the general govern- 
ment has come to the rescue of the tax-payers, and bears half the 
expense of running the city. This is only right, for Washington is a 

*Very much also depends, of course, upon the grades — good or bad — 
of the streets, but this a subject which it would not be within the scope 
of this pamphlet to discuss. 



fancy article which it is a matter of pride to the people of the whole 
country to keep up as a show place, but it is obvious that that city 
affords no rule or analogy for other cities. Leaving Washington, it 
may be said that American cities generally are more liberally laid out 
than European cities as to the amount of street area, but there are 
considerable differences among them in this respect. In Phila- 
delphia there is, I believe, a smaller proportion of streetage than 
in any other of our large cities, but I do not assert this as an 
ascertained fact. 

Now between the two extremes of wastefulness as to space — 
streets too wide and too near together (making the blocks too small) 
— and undue economy — streets too narrow and too far apart (making 
the blocks too large) — there is somewhere a golden mean to be 
sought after. To illustrate the great differences in different cities 
in these regards, we may refer to the accompanying Map No. 1, 
where there is shown, with other blocks for purposes of comparison, 
an average up-town Baltimore block, B, which measures 320 feet 
by 150, and is bounded by three 66-foot streets and one 20-foot 
alley. If the whole city were laid out on this plan, the proportion 
of area of streets, including alleys, would be 35^2 per cent, and of 
blocks 64^ per cent. On the same map there is shown an average 
up-town New York block, A, which measures 800 feet by 200,* and 
is bounded by 100-foot avenues and 60-foot streets, and if the whole 
city were laid out on that plan, the proportion of area of streets would 
be about 31^2 per cent, and of blocks about 68j^ per cent. In both 
cities the older, down-town, and business portions are divided Up into 
smaller blocks, but these vary so much in size, and the streets run so 
irregularly, that it would be altogether too troublesome a task to make 
for either city even an approximate calculation as to the proportion 
of street area in the business portion generally. It is sufficient to say 
that there are parts of Baltimore, especially in the older portions of 
the city, which are cut up into little blocks much smaller than any 
to be found in New York, and in particular to notice the region 
shown on Map No. 3, Plat I. There we find — leaving out of con- 
sideration the large block at the corner of South and German Streets 

*The blocks between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in New York are still 
larger, 920 feet by 200, nearly four times the size of the average Baltimore 
block. Blocks in Brooklyn are about the same as in New York. 



— 5 — 

— twenty-two blocks, the average size of which is only about 12,100 
square feet, say one-fourth the size of the ordinary up-town block 
in Baltimore, or one-thirteenth the size of the New York up-town 
block, and the street-area is about 50 per cent, of the whole surface, 
leaving only one-half for the area of blocks. This way of laying out 
valuable land in the heart of the business portion of the city, is 
evidently very wasteful. It would not have been adopted by an 
individual or corporation trying to develop the property on business 
principles. The reader's attention will be invited again later to 
this region. 

Returning to the more regularly laid out portions of New York 
and Baltimore, the New York up-town block of 160,000 square feet 
is, of course, three and one-third times as large as the Baltimore 
block of 48,000 square feet. Perhaps the New York block may be 
rather too large, probably the Baltimore block is too small, and 
certainly the depth of our blocks, 150 feet, is very badly chosen. 
On the same map, Map No. 1, is shown a block, D, which strikes 
a good average between the extremes of too large and too small. 
It is a block situated not in any distant city, but in that part of 
Baltimore, so to speak, which lies in Baltimore County, that is 
to say in Canton, just beyond the city limits. About sixty years 
ago the land of the Canton Company was laid out by Caspar 
Weaver, Surveyor, — so Mr. Martenet, our former City Surveyor, 
informs me — on a plan which seems on the whole a judicious one, 
and which is rather interesting by reason of the ingenuity shown in 
the selection of measurements. The blocks are each 458 feet by 204, 
the avenues are 70 feet wide and the streets 60 feet, so that ten blocks 
going north and south, and twenty blocks going east and west, make 
exactly one mile. The proportion of street area in a city laid 
out on this plan would be 33 per cent, and of blocks 67 per cent. 
It seems rather strange that so good a system as this, existing — on 
paper at least — at our very doors, should have been completely 
ignored, and that we should still have adhered to the old 150-feet- 
to-an-alley plan, as laid down on Poppleton's Plat. 

But to return to our typical Baltimore block, it is evident that in 
the small depth of our blocks, and in the fact that one side bounds 
on a 20-foot alley, we have determining causes which have modified 
in an important way the development of our city. I tried to point this 



out in a communication which I addressed to the Sun last summer, 
and which the Daily Record was so good as to think worth republishing 
with some words of approval. I will not go into the discussion of 
that subject here, further than to add this consideration, that probably 
the idea of laying out our lots with a depth of 150 feet to an alley 
was with the notion that this would suit very well for accommodating 
the stable which the owner might want to build on the rear of his 
lot, and that the alley-way would be convenient for the ingress and 
egress of servants. But most of the inhabitants of this, or of any 
other city, do not keep horses and carriages, nor maintain a troop 
of servants, and in laying out a city it is not possible to tell before- 
hand just where the very rich people are going to live, and I believe 
that all of those who have had much to do with real estate, or who 
have given any thought to the laying out of cities, are agreed that 
the plan of our Baltimore blocks, 150 feet to an alley, is — taking 
the whole city together — a bad one.* It is a bad enough plan 
in the city, it is still worse miles out in the country, where the 
city — I mean built-up city — will not reach for 100 years. Our rural 
boomers and developers who keep on laying out tracts with 66-foot 
streets and 20-foot alleys, ought to understand that a system of 
alleys out in the country is a glaring absurdity, and that such a 
"street" is a thing neither of beauty nor utility; that it is much too 
wide, that a lane about 35 feet wide (and all the better if it is not 
perfectly straight, but follows a winding course along the valley, or 
the line of least elevation) is altogether preferable, to say nothing 
of the valuable land wasted by the unnecessary street (or road) area. 
Two years ago Mr. Gustav W. Lurman, of Catonsville, in an address- 
delivered in Baltimore County, gave some very good advice about 
laying out roads, criticising the wide and straight avenues as 
"blots upon the landscape" in the neighborhood of Baltimore, a 
region which nature has done so much to make beautiful, and I feel 
tempted to quote from him, or to follow the line of his remarks, 
but it is a subject of too much importance to be treated of here, and 
in this merely incidental way. 

*When some 15 square miles of territory were added to the city a few 
years ago, a competent commission ought to have been appointed at 
once, to prepare and submit plans for the proper laying out of the annexed 
districts. The work could have been done then much more completely 
than it can now, but it would be better to begin now than not at all. 



But next ; — is it not the fact that a neighborhood can be laid out 
on some exceptionally bad plan, so badly indeed that no good im- 
provements will ever be built there? It certainly is the fact, and it 
is certain that we have in Baltimore some such neighborhoods, con- 
demned by their malformation to be mere slums, a nuisance in 
themselves and to some extent a blight upon property for a con- 
siderable distance around. When such a piece of stupidity was 
perpetrated as the laying out East and Chesnut Streets only 72 feet 
apart, it might have been foreseen that that would become a neigh- 
borhood of vile slums, and would so remain indefinitely. It was 
not because Douglass Street stopped short before it reached Exeter 
street ; it was not because there were too few streets running east and 
west, but because there was one street too many rtinning north and 
south, that this got to be such a squalid and disreputable locality. 
This was pointed out in editorial articles in the News and 
American, published two years ago and more, when the common- 
sense of the community was trying in vain to assert itself against 
the common-council-sense which in 1884 undertook to saddle upon 
the tax-payers a culpable piece of extravagance. 

A little study of the map ought to have shown the Mayor and City 
Council when they passed that Douglass Street opening ordinance, 
avowedly for the benefit of East Baltimore, that turning the site of 
Odd Fellows Hall into a "Plaza" was not going to rid us of the 
slums. Something very different was needed to improve them out 
of existence, and Mayor Davidson adopted the correct view of the 
situation in his first message to the City Council, and again when 
in April 1890, he urged upon the Committee on Highways, that 
instead of spending half a million of dollars upon the Douglass Street 
improvement (at least half of that sum being simply wasted), 
they should, at an outlay of one sixth of the money, or less, demolish 
the long narrow block between East and Chesnut Streets and make 
one wide parked place where the two streets now are He returned 
to the subject in his message of January 26, 1891, as follows: 

"The Douglass Street opening does not really bring the relief needed 
in a section of the City which is most neglected, and the condition of 
which is absolutely disgraceful. I refer to the section lying between 
Aisquith and Exeter Streets, north of Fayette Street and south of Low 
Street. 



"The way to improve this section is by spending money judiciously, 
right there on the spot, and not by tearing down costly buildings a third 
of a mile distant. Forrest Street should be opened through to Fayette 
Street, at the corner of Comet Alley, instead of ending, as it now does, in 
a crooked, unpaved alley. . . . 

"But a more important and radical measure is, I think, needed. An 
examination of this part of the City will show that all of this region was 
permanently injured by the singular mistake which was made in laying out 
East and Chesnut Streets only 72 feet apart. On the lots between these 
streets, averaging only 36 feet in depth, no decent improvements have 
been or ever will be made, and the houses built on the opposite sides of 
the streets, that is to say on the east side of East Street and the west side 
of Chesnut, are also most miserable and squalid, reflecting the character 
of the houses which face them, although the depth of the lots on the east 
side of East Street and the west side of Chesnut Street, is such that im- 
provements of a good class might be built upon them. 

"After much reflection, it has seemed to me that the only cure for this 
state of things is to condemn and tear down all the houses between East 
and Chesnut Streets, from Fayette Street northwardly to a point (about 
147 feet from Douglass Street), where the two streets diverge, and become 
far enough apart to admit of decent improvements being built upon them. 
I should not recommend this merely for the sake of getting rid of the dis- 
reputable houses which disgrace this neighborhood, if there were any 
probability that the property thereabouts might ever be better improved 
either for residence or business purposes. But it is impossible that any 
good improvements will be put up there while the streets remain as now 
laid out. It is a great misfortune that the streets were laid out on this 
absurd plan, and it is only through action on the part of the City that the 
mistake can be rectified. 

"The new street thus made will be about 162 feet wide, about the width 
of Eutaw Place, and it should be parked with trees and grass plots down 
the middle, like Eutaw Place or Broadway. It would then constitute so 
handsome an improvement as to materially enhance the value of property, 
and insure the speedy erection of an entirely different class of improve- 
ments in that locality. But even if this increase of values should not occur, 
the City owes it to itself to do away with the miserable slums which now 
exist there, because the Douglass Street opening will cause a wide avenue 
to pass through, and expose to the gaze of the public, what before was 
comparatively out of the way and hidden. It may not be sound public 
policy for the City to embark in the business of buying out slums, but 
here is an eye-sore and a hideous offense to the moral sense of the 
community. 

"The cost of this improvement will be much less than might be sup- 
posed. The total assessed value of all the property to be thus condemned 
and destroyed is about $8o,ooo, the property consisting of some ninety-five 



— 9 — 

dwellings of the average value (for house and lot) of only about $850, and 
no doubt a considerable part of the expense will be made up from the 
benefits to be assessed upon property on the improved and widened street. 

"The substance of these suggestions was embodied in a communication 
which I addressed on April 11, 1890, to the City Council Committee on 
Highways, and further reflection on the subject has convinced me of the 
urgent need of this measure of relief to a section of the City which ought 
to be very different from what it is. 

"The preliminary notice of an intention to apply for such an ordinance 
has already been published, and I trust the Council will concur with me 
as to the desirability of the improvement. Preliminary notice for the 
proposed opening of Forrest Street has also been published. A study of 
the map, or an examination of the locality, will show that the closing of 
the westernmost end of Half-Moon Alley, and also the westernmost end 
of Comet Street, is needed to complete the proposed improvements, and 
preliminary notices, accordingly, have already been inserted in two of the 
daily newspapers." 

I prepared, at Mayor Davidson's request, the four ordinances 
which he recommended, and they were passed by the City Council, 
and approved on May 25 th and 27th, 1891. They are known as 
numbers 95, 96, 97 and 105.* 

* When this pamphlet was nearly ready for the press, my attention was 
called by Mr. Martenet to an ordinance of the Mayor and City Council, 
approved June 6, 1890, by which the name of East Street was changed to 
Rogers Avenue. Evidently at the date of his message to the City Council 
above quoted, Mayor Davidson had forgotten this change of name, and I 
must confess that I had never heard of it when the preliminary notice of 
the ordinance — No. 95 of 1891 — was published, and when the ordinance 
itself was passed, and no doubt the members of the City Council who 
passed the ordinance, had also forgotten, or were ignorant of the change 
of name. I am quite willing to bear, with them, my share of the blame 
for this very pardonable lack of information, or my share of the joke upon 
us, if it is a large enough one to go round among so many. If the fact had 
been borne in mind, the preliminary notice, and the ordinance, would have 
mentioned the street as "Rogers Avenue, until recently known as East 
Street," but I hardly think the failure to mention the brand-new name, 
which it seems not even the Mayor and City Council had got familiar with, 
will affect the validity of the ordinance. But what a characteristic specimen 
this is of our absurd fashion of making changes, utterly uncalled for, and 
generally for the worse, in the names of streets. Rogers Avenue ! As if 
this poor little street, and the slums through which it runs, were going to 
be dignified and improved, or the property enhanced one cent per foot in 
value, by such a change of name. There is too much of this "avenue" 
foolishness. In the city, "street" is a much better word ; "lane" or "road" 
are much better in the country. Think of the picturesque "Rolling Road" 
in Baltimore County having its name changed to "Catonsville Avenue," 
of "Republican Street," the name of which was an offence to the demo- 
cratic city government of 1874, changed to "Carrollton Avenue," — it had 
borne its "Republican" name for generations, and when that was the 



The "slums region" as it now is, is shown on Map No. 2, Plat I, 
and as it will be, after these ordinances are carried into effect, on 
Map No. 2, Plat II. I think no one will dispute Mayor Davidson's 
view that the moderate outlay required will be more than justified 
by the great improvement which will result.* 

But there is a further improvement — a very great one — which 
could be made at slight expense, and, I think, ought to be made. 
That is to extend the parking north-westwardly between the two 
streets, and let it expand into a small park or square bounded on 
the north-west by Low Street. Map No. 2, Plat III, shows this 
! roposed improvement of the slums region. A good deal of the 
.additional area to be taken by the plan which I now suggest, is 
unimproved, and where it is built upon, the improvements are very 
poor, and all of the land itself is of but little value on account 
of the wretched slums in its neighborhood. The welcome oasis of 
green, nearly three acres in extent, thus gained for the public, 
would be a good thing in itself, and would greatly benefit sur- 
rounding property in all directions. To condemn and demolish 
valuable business property in the heart of the city, and turn it 
into a public square, seems to me to be unwise. A square, or 
park, so situated costs a great deal more, and does much less 

designation of what is now the democratic part)', — of "Adams Street," 
(perhaps because the Adamses were Yankee Presidents), changed in 1870 
to "Harlem Avenue," of "Sharp" (it should have been "Sharpe Street") 
changed to "Hopkins Place," of "Chatsworth Street," changed to "Myrtle 
Avenue," of "North Street," changed to "Guilford Avenue," etc., etc. 
The name of North Street should have been let alone, and North Avenue, 
with its two names of East North Avenue and West North Avenue, might 
well have been changed to Boundary Avenue, or some other name. West 
Street also, in its two contradictory or reduplicated forms, of East West 
Street and West West Street, should have had some other name bestowed 
upon it. But just those streets whose names were good enough already 
were selected for change. Even our old friend Chesnut Street has had its 
name, west of Gay Street, changed to Colvin Street. We are still away 
behind the city of Mexico in this matter of different local names for one 
and the same street, for there a street takes a new name with every new 
block, which must be rather a strain on the memory. 

*It may perhaps be doubted whether it would not have been better to 
make the southern extension of the widened Forrest Street, stop at Comet 
Street, leaving Comet Alley as it is, which probably would be a sufficient 
southern outlet for the very small amount of travel which will ever come 
down Forrest Street. The extension all the way to Fayette Street, how- 
ever, although perhaps unnecessary, will not have added very much to the 
cost of a greatly needed improvement. 



good, than a square, or park, in regions where people live. 
For this reason the project, once favored by our present (and 
several times former) Mayor, of making a public square out of the 
land opposite the City Hall and running through to Gay Street, 
was, I think, most injudicious. Part of this scheme has gone into 
effect. The people in their wisdom (as represented by the city 
authorities) decided to have a little "Plaza" of paving stones where 
Odd Fellows Hall stands, but it is to be hoped that they will content 
themselves with the extravagance thus far perpetrated without also 
tearing down Holliday Street Theatre and Pepper's Hotel to com- 
plete this cyclone style of improving the city. "That is the way 
to lay the city flat," and at the same time to flatten out the citizens' 
pocket-books. Grass and trees will grow just as well on a cheap 
lot as on a dear one, and the cheapest site for a park anywhere 
between the City Hall and Aisquith Street is just the one which 
I have mentioned above. 

Now for another slums-neighborhood, small and unimportant 
compared with the one just considered. Between Lexington and 
Fayette Streets there are two little alleys, New Church Street and 
Goodwin Alley, about 18 feet and 15 feet wide, I believe, running 
parallel with each other from Crooked Lane to Sharp Street, and 
only 42 feet apart. A region consequently which was just cut out 
for slums, and sure enough, a very pronounced case of disreputable 
and disorderly slums developed itself there. Fortunately, as a 
result of the increased value of Lexington Street property, the large 
stores built on the south side of that street have been extended 
southwardly until they have at last fairly built out some of the 
objectionable houses. But that miserable little "block", only 42 
feet in width and utterly incapable of decent improvement, remains 
as originally laid out. It ought without delay to be "improved off 
the face of the earth" — as the Yankee said of the French Canadians 
— and as follows: By closing Goodwin Alley and widening New 
Church Street on the south side to say 25 feet in all. The lots on 
the north side of Fayette street would then have a depth of about 
145 feet to the alley (New Church Street), and it is probable that 
before many years valuable warehouses and stores fronting on 
Fayette Street would cover the whole of this depth, just as many of 
the stores on Lexington Street have already been extended back to 



the alley. Or perhaps a better arrangement would be to condemn 
say 12 feet in width of the northernmost part of New Church Street 
— which would virtually be to add so much to the depth of the 
Lexington Street lots, now 120 feet deep, — and to lay out as a new 
New Church Street, a 2 5 -foot alley 132 feet distant from Lexington 
Street. This would leave about 133 feet as the average depth of the 
lots running back northwardly from Fayette Street. Either plan 
would be an improvement over existing conditions, but as to the 
question which plan is best, I leave that to those more interested 
than I am, to decide. Let some "other fellow walk the floor." * 

Just here its may be worth while to mention that when that 
monumental piece of folly, the Hanover Street opening ordinance, 
was passed by the Mayor and City Council in 1874, one of the 
arguments by which it was attempted to justify the opening north- 
wardly to Mulberry Street, at an enormous cost, was that thus 
we could "purify the slums" and "let in the light of day" 
upon the little Whitechapel which New Church Street then was, 
just as the promoters of the Douglass Street folly contended that 
by widening a 50-foot cross-street to a 70-foot avenue the larger 
Whitechapel of East and Chesnut Streets was going to be improved 
into decency. In both cases the remedy was in absurd disproportion 
to the disease, and was based upon a mistaken diagnosis. 

But enough, for the present, of these unsavory slums. Let us now 
take a look at what may be called our business slums, a small region 
fortunately but which lies in the heart of the business portion of 
town. The district referred to is in that part of the city which is 
shown on Map No. 3, Plat I ; but before turning our attention to 
the particular place in question, it may be interesting to note how 
it was that all that part of town came to be so badly laid out. 
That there are too many streets there, is evident enough, but the 

*In the year 1878 this New Church Street child of wrath was re- 
christened, and started upon a career of respectability by the name of 
Wyoming Street, — perhaps because fair Wyoming was "on Susquehanna's 
side," and Susquehanna means "crooked river," and this street runs out 
from Crooked Lane. Possibly through a hope that the Magdalens of the 
neighborhood might be converted into Gertrudes. At least, if these were 
not the reasons, I do not know what were It is a very good name, but it 
was a pity to waste it upon this forlorn little alley. I mention the fact 
here by way of a warning note to any interested or public spirited persons 
who may think of having passed some such ordinance as I have indicated 
above. 



— 1 3 — 

fact is not so well-known that some of them were not originally 
laid out as streets. Three of them, Ellicott Street, Hollingsworth 
Street and Cheapside, used to be docks, running north from the 
Basin — the Cheapside dock running all the way to Water Street, 
the other two not extending so far north, — until by an Act of 
Assembly, passed in 1818, they were closed and filled in as streets, 
and Pratt Street became the northernmost boundary of the Basin 
and remaining docks. It is a great many years since not — "a river 
flowed on through the vale of Cheapside," if I may quote here 
Wordsworth's line, —but since a sluggish tide rose and fell there, 
and only a few of our oldest inhabitants can remember those docks 
of long ago, whose former existence explains the curious plan of 
over-streeting shown in that region. 

And now for the particular spot which has suffered most from 
this faulty arrangement. If one goes southwardly along Calvert 
Street, he will find that all the way from Lombard to Pratt Street 
he has on his left a row of very poor brick buildings, perhaps about 
a hundred years old. The reason why the property has remained 
in this undeveloped condition, is perfectly obvious. The lot is only 
34 feet deep ! By a most unwise arrangement of streets, Ave have 
Calvert Street laid out 60 feet wide, and Cheapside 65 feet wide, 
west and east of this long and absurdly narrow block. The shorter 
block between Lombard and Water Streets has the same small 
depth, but, for the very reason that it is a short and not a long 
block, the improvements erected upon it are of much better 
character than those upon the block south of Lombard Street, 
which is 380 feet long. 

It is very obvious that here we have too much street and too little 
block, and also that most of the property between Calvert Street 
and Cheapside from Lombard to Pratt Street will never be decently 
improved unless some radical alteration is made in the arrangement 
of the streets. 

Now, what should that alteration be? One plan would be simply 
to close Cheapside from Lombard to Pratt Street. By this plan 
24,700 square feet would be gained, but the lots from Calvert Street 
to Bowly Street (which is only 20 feet wide) would be 165 feet deep, 
and this is no doubt a rather greater depth — to an alley — than is 
generally desirable for business purposes. It is, however, to be 



— 14 — 

borne in mind that the block on the east side of Sharp Street, south 
of Lombard (shown on Map No. 1), is still deeper, 222 feet to an 
alley, and that in spite of this depth — or because of this depth, 
I will not attempt to say which — it has lately been improved by 
some of the finest warehouses ever built in Baltimore. Whether 
the kind of trade which has sought, or will seek, South Calvert Street, 
needs very deep lots or rather shallow lots, let those who are more 
familiar than I am with the subject decide. But, again, the property 
on the east side of Cheapside running back to Bowly Street, is im- 
proved by valuable buildings, and the plan of closing Cheapside 
would involve the payment of such heavy damages for this property 
that probably it ought not to be adopted. If there is a reasonable 
probability that within a few years very fine warehouses would be 
built covering the whole depth from Calvert Street to Bowly Street, 
then this plan, although so costly, might be justifiable ; if not, not. 
Let that be settled by the opinions of those who know most about 
the kind of trade which belongs to that neighborhood, and its 
demands. So far as I can form an opinion on the subject, I should 
say that the possibility of improvement would by no means justify 
the certainty of very heavy expense. 

Without closing Cheapside then, is there any other way in which 
this shallow and forlorn-looking block between Calvert Street and 
Cheapside, south of Lombard Street, can be made capable of decent 
improvement? I would suggest the following plan : to make Calvert 
street south of Lombard Street a 45 -foot street (15 feet narrower than 
it now is) and Cheapside a 40-foot street (25 feet narrower than it 
now is), and by thus adding to the narrow lot 40 feet taken from 
the beds of those two streets, to make a lot 74 feet deep, which 
would be a tolerably good lot for business purposes. The Chamber 
of Commerce building stands on a lot only a very little deeper than 
this lot would be. By this plan (see Map No. 3, Plat II), there 
would be gained 15,200 square feet, and what is more important, 
the lots which are now covered by shanties — those poor old brick 
buildings hardly deserve any better name — would very soon be 
covered by fine stores or warehouses. As to the mere value of the 
land gained, if land thereabouts is worth about $5 per square foot 
— as to which I can only make a vague conjecture — then the area 
to be thus saved by narrowing the streets would of itself be worth 



— i5 — 

#76,000, less of course expenses and damages. But the main point 
is not what the city would get from the sale of land, but the greatly 
improved character of the buildings which would be put up there, 
the taxable basis of the city being thus largely increased. 

Perhaps a word should be added here as to a legal question 
which would seem to be raised by the plan which I have suggested 
to make Calvert Street 15 feet narrower, and Cheapside 25 feet 
narrower. The city has the power (Public Local Laws, Article IV, 
Section 806) "to provide for laying out, opening, extending, 
widening, straightening, or closing up in whole or in part, any 
street, square, lane or alley, within the bounds of said city," and 
whether the power to close up in whole or in part, extends to the 
narrowing of a street, may perhaps not be free from doubt. Another 
doubt may be raised whether, supposing that a street may be made 
narrower, two streets may by one and the same ordinance, both be 
made narrower so as to enlarge the lot lying between, and whether, 
again, the passage of two ordinances might not be attended with 
difficulties. Perhaps the present experienced law officers of the city, 
or some of their predecessors in office, may have had occasion to 
consider these questions, as to which I do not here propose to 
volunteer an opinion.* If the plan of enlarging the block by 
narrowing the two streets be beyond the city's powers, it can of 
course be accomplished through an Act of Assembly. Legislation 
on a much larger scale was applied for and obtained (Act of 1834, 
chapter 81) when the "Poppleton's Plat" arrangement of streets 
and alleys over some 100 acres in the city — the Mount Clare 
property belonging to the late James Carroll — was done away with, 
so as to permit of a more judicious laying out of the streets. 

No doubt, there will be opposition to one of the plans which I 
have suggested for changing this Cheapside-Calvert Street neighbor- 
hood, on the ground that 40-foot and 45 -foot streets are too narrow, 
that it would "injure" Calvert Street and Cheapside to be narrowed 
by the 15 and 25 feet taken off. But width of streets should be viewed 
as a means, not as an end. By keeping the streets wide, the inter- 
vening property is ruined, by narrowing them it will be greatly 



*A somewhat similar question might be raised a propos of one of the 
New Church Street plans suggested above. 



— i6 — 

improved, and property on the west side of Calvert Street will feel 
and reflect the improvement; — will be more valuable when it faces 
fine warehouses, across a 45-foot street, than now when it stands 
opposite to such poor buildings across a 60-foot street. Similarly 
as to property on the east side of Cheapside. When we remember 
that business of hundreds of millions of dollars is transacted in the 
narrow streets of London and Boston, when we recall the fact that 
Light Street and Lexington Street, west of Charles, are only 40 feet 
wide, and West German Street and Commerce Street less than that, 
no further argument on this point ought to be needed. A 45-foot or 
even a 40-foot street, is wide enough to accommodate a very large 
and flourishing business, especially if — as is the case with Cheap- 
side and South Calvert Street — it is riot encumbered with car-tracks. 

It may seem paradoxical to say so, but it is nevertheless the fact 
that a 40-foot street in Baltimore is narrower than a 40-foot street 
in Boston, or doubtless than in other cities which could be named, 
the explanation being that here we allow greater intrusions upon 
the sidewalk in the matter of door-steps, cellar-ways and. shop-fronts, 
than would be allowed in most other large cities. In crowded streets 
like our 40-foot Lexington Street, or our 50-foot Gay Street, shop- 
fronts should not be allowed to protrude at all, but everything 
should be kept back rigorously to the building line, leaving the 
whole space clear for travel and traffic. Of course when Cheapside 
is narrowed to 40 feet, the existing side-walk on the east side should 
be made narrower than it now is, and if possible, all telegraph poles 
should be banished from the street. 

It may be objected that there seems to be some inconsistency 
between the position which Mayor Davidson took, that the 72-foot 
block between East and Chesnut Streets is incapable of decent im- 
provement, and my suggestion that the Calvert Street block should 
be widened to 74 feet, so that a good class of improvements may be 
built there, but there is no real inconsistency. Mayor Davidson 
was dealing with a residence portion of the town — if one may so 
speak of that wretched locality — while we are now considering the 
heart of the business section. Blocks will do very well for stores 
which would be altogether too small for two rows of good dwellings. 

There is another neighborhood, not a business locality this time, 
to which attention might be called. When Park Street was opened 



— i7 — 

northwardly some years ago, an unsightly wedge-shaped triangle, 
quite incapable of decent improvement, was left between Park Street 
and Fulton Alley, north of Tyson Street, and there it has remained, 
a hindrance to the development of neighboring property. The alley 
ought to be closed from Tyson Street northwardly. About 220 feet 
of frontage on Park Street would thus be gained, and before many 
years good buildings would be put up there. 

And now I take leave of this not very interesting examination of 
particular localities, where, as I have tried to show, a whole neigh- 
borhood can be seriously injured, and perhaps remain for generations 
in an undeveloped condition, because of its faulty laying out. Other 
instances can be found, plenty of them no doubt, but two of those 
which I have given are among the most conspicuous. What has 
been shown leads, I think, to these two conclusions. 1st. That a 
neighborhood can be more seriously and. permanently injured by too 
much street than by having too few streets ; more by chopping up 
into too small blocks, than by leaving the blocks too large — a truth 
which the professional street openers of Baltimore would do well to 
heed — and 2dly, that if our Mayors and City Councilmen would 
turn their best attention to improvements such as I have pointed 
out, there would be "millions in it" for the city. Building ex- 
hibition halls, or two-million-dollar Court-houses, getting up trades 
displays, or sending the finest possible — or the most fantastic — 
"exhibit" to the Chicago Fair, will not "boom" or "advertise," 
or advance the city one-half so well as attending to its proper 
development and laying out, — correcting, where it is practicable, 
mistakes made in the older parts of town, and avoiding them in 
the new parts. 

Swift said that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades 
of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, 
would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to 
his country, than the whole race of politicians put together. With 
but slight change — for in the city we do not want to raise a large 
grass crop in the streets, but we do want to see finer improvements 
put up — this would be good doctrine for the average city-council- 
man to lay to heart. If he will try to rectify — when it can be done 
at small expense — ill planned localities where only shanties can 
stand now, but where good dwellings or warehouses can and will be 



— 18 — 

built after the changes are made, he will have deserved better of his 
city, than by years spent in scrambling for his share of lamplighters 
and garbagemen, and all the patronage of "peanut politics." 

There is one very serious consideration to which of course due 
weight must be given whenever the question comes up of the ad- 
visableness of condemning property for public use, and that is the 
excessive value which owners put upon their property, and the 
excessive damages which their eloquent attorneys claim before 
a jury when condemnation cases are tried. But admitting that 
there is a great danger, amounting almost to a certainty, that 
the city will have to pay more than it -is worth for the property 
it takes, while this ought to be a controlling reason against ill con- 
trived and unnecessary street openings, it ought not to stand in the 
way of a public improvement which is not too costly and which is 
urgently needed, and if it can be shown that it will certainly result 
in a great enhancement of values. 

Before taking leave of this subject, I may perhaps be allowed to 
recall the history of the Hanover Street opening ordinance of 1874, 
and of its repeal, although in doing so I mention my own connection 
with the matter. When the ordinance to open this street all the way 
to Mulberry Street was passed, not one of the daily papers came out 
against this piece of wasteful extravagance. About half a million 
dollars — to make a necessarily vague, but I think a very moderate 
estimate — would have been wasted, and worse than wasted (for the 
property not destroyed would have been left, much of it, incapable 
of decent improvement), but not a word of protest was uttered. 
Fortunately Mr. W. M. Laffan, the very able editor of a weekly paper, 
the Bulletin, then published here, and long since discontinued (and 
who is more widely known through his connection later with Harper 1 s 
Monthly, and now with the New York Sun) became interested in the 
subject, and thought that the saving of so much money and property 
was not beneath the notice of his newspaper. Two communications 
— or articles, I forget which — in opposition to the projected street 
opening appeared in the Bulletin. They produced absolutely no effect. 
I need feel no hesitation about saying so, for I wrote them myself. 
Some time afterwards Mr. Laffan and I talked the matter over, and 
we agreed that another attempt should be made, that the articles 
should be republished, condensed, with a map, which he was to 



— . 19 — 

supply. Within a few days the map had — I will not say converted 
public opinion, for no one seemed to think or care anything about 
the subject before, but — created a very strong public opinion, which 
was reflected in the daily press, and demanded the repeal of the 
ordinance. Mr. H. Rozier Dulany, who was then in the City Council, 
interested himself very warmly in the movement, and introduced 
and promptly put through the repealing ordinance. 

In the same way the Douglass Street folly went unrebuked of the 
press, and almost unnoticed of the people, until the News, in April 
1889, published a map showing how the taxpayers' money was being 
wasted (for the map and accompanying articles showed, to a demon- 
stration, that the street opening could be made by a straighter route 
for about one-half the money), whereupon a very powerful public 
sentiment formulated itself, many of our best citizens, among them 
Messrs. Enoch Pratt, Andrew Reid, J. Hall Pleasants, Henry James, 
John Curlett, Joseph Friedenwald, and Douglas H. Thomas, — as a 
matter of public spirit and not because their own property was 
affected — protested against the scheme, and the American took 
strong ground editorially against it. I have little doubt that if the 
movement had begun earlier the project would have been defeated. 

Now from this there are one or two lessons to be learned. One is 
that while our people are very apathetic in resisting any street- 
opening raid upon the city's treasury, they will sometimes act when 
they see the point, and that the way to open their eyes is to publish 
a map of the premises. A second lesson, a corollary from this, is 
that the law ought to be changed so as to require that as soon as the 
preliminary notice of any street opening is published, a map show- 
ing the property to be condemned — say on a scale of not less than 
50 feet to an inch — shall be prepared and put on file in the Street 
Commissioners' office. If it were also required that a map, on a 
smaller scale, should be published in one of the newspapers with the 
preliminary notice, this would be a still better protection to the 
taxpayer. As it is, he gets left; he is the "forgotten man" all 
the time. His position, which was bad enough before, was made 
worse by a recent decision of the Court of Appeals. The law 
requiring that before a street-opening ordinance shall be passed, 
"at least sixty days' notice shall be given of any application for the 
passage of such ordinance, in at least two of the daily newspapers," 



the Court held that one insertion of the notice in the two newspapers 
is enough. 

It would be a mistake to suppose that a foolish street-opening project 
is necessarily and always a. Job, as it sometimes is, of the anonymous 
promoters of it. Such projects are often favored by sensible men, 
good citizens, who simply do not understand the subject, and the 
ordinances may be passed in good faith by City Councilmen, and 
approved by Mayors, who, without a map before them, with no exact 
knowledge of the locality, and with no sort of estimate of the cost, 
really do not know how they are wasting the people's money. 

In his message already quoted from, Mayor Davidson said: "In 
the matter of street openings, in my opinion, the law should be 
changed so as to require the legal advertisement of the purpose to 
make such application to be signed by several responsible persons, 
and preceded by an elaborate survey, with a full description of the 
proposed opening, accurately made, so as to thoroughly inform the 
public, and prevent the consummation of schemes which benefit 
private property almost wholly at the expense of the City." If 
Mayor Latrobe had had before him in 1884 the map which the News 
published five years later, showing how a quarter of a million dollars 
could be saved in the Lexington-Douglass-Street opening, and the 
destruction of Odd Fellows Hall avoided, he might have taken the 
same view which Mayor Davidson so strongly held, that here was 
a good deal of money being thrown away. 

Until our city government becomes more vigilant in watching 
and scotching, or killing, these extravagant street openings, and 
until the law is changed so as to require the publication of 
ample notice, with filing of maps, would it not be well for 
some of our newspapers to make it their business to protect the 
community in this respect. It used to be a joke among journalists, 
that one of the great dailies of Chicago had a "snake-editor" on its 
staff, and the name seems to suggest a department to which some 
one of our reporters might, with no discredit to himself and with 
much advantage to the public, be assigned; — that of watching the 
columns of the different newspapers for preliminary notices of street- 
openings, and getting up the maps to be published in his newspaper 
(which would always attract attention) to show the unwary or un- 
imaginative reader just what the alleged improvement is going to be, 



— 21 — 

— a diagram, as it were, to explain the poor joke about to be perpe- 
trated in the City Hall at the taxpayers' expense. It is a place 
where economy is not .generally the favorite watch-word. If our 
municipal legislators remember Artemus Ward's famous advice : 
"Always live within your income, even if you have to borrow 
money to do it," it is the latter half, not the first half of that 
Delphic utterance, which they lay most to heart. If some one of 
our newspapers were to take up regularly the role of watch-dog of 
the city's treasury, it would earn and receive the thanks of a large 
part of the community. 

I take pleasure in expressing my obligations to Mr. Simon J. 
Martenet, formerly our City Surveyor, who takes a public spirited 
interest in matters connected with the city's improvement and 
welfare, and has very kindly supplied me with the maps which this 
pamphlet contains. I am glad to be able to quote him as approving, 
in the main, my suggestions as to what ought now to be done 
in the localities which have been treated of in some detail. 



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What, will you walk with me about the town ? 
— Comedy of Errors. 



Streets and Slums. 



A STUDY IN 



LOCAL MUNICIPAL GEOGRAPHY. 



(WITH MAPS.) 



IJY 



Frederick J. Brown. 



BALTIMORE, 
CUSHING & COMPANY. 



Price. 35 cents. 



